How to Pierce a Deafening Silence? Maybe an Army Can Help

Email haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

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The Haggler is a giver. He gives and gives. You know that.

What does the Haggler ask in return? Nothing, really. A word of thanks would be nice. So would a parade. Not a huge parade. A modest one, with bunting and balloons and perhaps ticker tape. The more ticker tape, the better, to be honest. A blizzard of ticker tape would be ideal. And when parade day comes, everyone should feel free to skip work and swing by to cheer, just as they do when the Yankees win the World Series.

Doesn’t seem like much to ask. But the Haggler doesn’t ask for much.

Until now.

The Haggler, dear readers, needs your help. Specifically, he needs you to contact a certain company that is ignoring the Haggler. Here is the story:

Generally speaking, corporations respond quickly to the Haggler. At a minimum, they look at whatever email of complaint the Haggler has forwarded and examine whether the customer who wrote it has a legitimate beef.

Nearly half the time, that examination shows that the corporation did nothing wrong. In those cases, the Haggler says thank you and moves on.

It is highly unusual for a corporation to stonewall the Haggler. But that began to happen two months ago, when the Haggler contacted a Texas-based electronics and appliance chain called Conn’s, which has more than 80 stores, mostly in the South and Southwest. He wrote on behalf of a customer named Grace Bunmi Salako Smith. She is a Nigerian immigrant with a Ph.D. in public health who lives in Dallas, where she teaches children in juvenile detention.

Last year, Ms. Smith went to a Conn’s in Dallas and bought a refrigerator and a computer, for a total of $2,587. She says that she could have bought this merchandise outright, but that she wanted to enhance her credit score so she would have better standing to make investments in real estate. So she financed it with a special offer from Conn’s, the terms of which allow her to pay no interest as long as she makes regular payments each month.

Ms. Smith says she abided by those terms, though the story becomes complicated. It’s clear that Ms. Smith made at least one late payment, as a protest because no one at Conn’s would service her then-broken refrigerator. But that late payment was explicitly forgiven by the company, as detailed in a Conn’s document that Ms. Smith scanned and forwarded to the Haggler.

In April, when she went to Conn’s to make her final payment, and close out her balance, Ms. Smith was informed that she owed $751 in interest. According to Conn’s, she had broken the terms of that zero-interest program.

So here is the question: Is Conn’s correct?

On May 6, the Haggler wrote to Conn’s, and an executive assistant, Angela Lagrone, made all the noises typical at that stage. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” she wrote.

Soon, the noises took on a get-lost tone. On May 9, she wrote that the company “cannot discuss details” of Ms. Smith’s case “with anyone but the customer.”

Ms. Smith immediately sent a notarized letter instructing Conn’s that she would waive whatever privacy rights the company has claimed on her behalf, allowing the company to discuss this situation with the Haggler.

Then, silence. The Haggler tried calling Conn’s executives at the company’s headquarters in The Woodlands, Tex., outside Houston. Not only did the Haggler never reach an executive — including the chief executive, Theodore M. Wright — he never spoke to any of the executive’s assistants. The best he could do was leave messages on those assistants’ voicemail. The response? Nothing.

So the Haggler started calling these executives at home, in the evening.

This yielded a single return call, from Walter M. Broussard, who is the senior vice president for sales operations, according to Conn’s website. Mr. Broussard sounded reasonably concerned, but his only suggestion was to contact Michael J. Poppe, the chief operating officer.

Mr. Poppe has not returned three voice mail messages left with his assistant. Ms. Lagrone has ceased returning emails. Aside from the operators who answer the switchboard, nobody at Conn’s will speak to the Haggler.

It’s worth noting that the Haggler is agnostic about the merits of Ms. Smith’s complaint. It never makes sense to prejudge, and Conn’s might have a perfectly defensible reason for charging her $751 in interest. What they don’t have is any defensible reason for refusing to discuss the matter.

Also worth noting is that Conn’s has a blemished record when it comes to dealing with customers. In 2009, Greg Abbott, the state attorney general of Texas, cited thousands of complaints against Conn’s when his office filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of false advertising and other violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

“We are going to be seeking restitution for consumers who have been ripped off by Conn’s,” Mr. Abbott said at a news conference at the time, deploring what he called “the despicable way” that the company had treated consumers.

A few months later, the company settled the case by agreeing to change its business practices and to pay $4.5 million in restitution to customers. But since then, people have made more than 1,000 complaints about Conn’s on an assortment of online consumer sites, raising issues about billing, delivery and more.

So, dear reader, you may be wondering how you can help. Thank you for asking.

Conn’s is giving the Haggler the cold shoulder, but would it do the same to a swarm of consumers? Let’s find out. You are cordially invited to contact the company and urge it to respond to the Haggler.

Choose whatever method you like. You can tweet the company via @connsinc, and, while you’re at it, you can ask your friends and followers to do the same. (Suggested hashtag: #talktothehaggler.) Or you can email Ms. Lagrone at angela.lagrone@conns.com. If you’re old school and prefer the phone, Ms. Lagrone can be reached at (936) 230-5879.

Be polite, be firm and have some fun. And look for an update in this space in two weeks.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Pierce a Deafening Silence? Maybe an Army Can Help. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe